OK, notes intersperesed...
From: eira.sms@virgin.net
To: bidavids@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Night land : Sea of images: Plan 'A'.
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2011 01:41:42 +0000
The Plan:
The cover image should show The Game
(And some 'tasteful' flesh) with a heavy preponderance of the dark structures
around the room. This is 'Coz, like the crystal 'Cradle', it's the central,
linking image through the novel.
I bow to Andy for pointing this out in the very
beginning.
Indeed, good idea. Games are compelling - think of The Seventh Seal and its endless parodies.
An image of Meyr adorned as the effigy and Goddess of the Last Redoubt might be compelling in an erotic manner, while showing her power and status, but it also might be quite static - a game suggests something to come, tension, uncertainty, a battle of wits, and it can show in miniature a lot of complex ideas not present in a mere picture of an idol.
The
first section is a whirlwind of great and varied images but I think we need
to see the sheer panoply of the Celebration, of Mery's manifestation as The
Mother Redoubt (It is, after all, the defining moment of her Myth) and, if poss,
the violent downfall of the 17. That's quite a lot in one
picture!
The second section has many images - though not so
many as the first (I'm sorely tempting by Pallin dressing in his armour) -
but the image to choose must certainly be one from the Land. This narrows it
down a little.
OK, though if you do Pallin, remember that one of his legs is prosthetic. There is a scene where P unrolls a dynamic interactive map. "The Field Marshall stands over the table pointing at the map" is a venerable cliche... Still, there is so much indoors action action, Meyr/Lyreia entangled with an Eater might be much more exciting.
I really do NOT want to draw The Watcher because
however well I might manage it, it'll merely be a 'Monster' which we can stare
at and 'map'. As I understand, the appearance of the Watcher is entirely
subjective and it's not so much its physiognomy that matters so much as its
'Personality'. This might be possible as an abstract painting but not for my
pedestrian graphic style (Unless, of course, you want me to do the whole thing
with a hint of 'Abstract', I suspect not. It seems we want to keep something of
a 'House style' in keeping with 'Eater'). Accordingly, like God, to portray the
Watcher is to lessen it. (Tempting though it is, as always, to rip off
Frantisek Kupka's Black Idol).
Ah yes, well of course Kupka's The Black Idol was in my mind as a starting point, but the Watcher became much weirder in the writing. I wonder how obliquely it can be represented? Parts, synecdoche, a maps and diagrams held in Pallin's hand, that sort of thing? An important conversation between P and M takes place on the shores of a "lake" that is the Watcher's eye, and at one point it takes on her appearance. The human party are like ants crawling over a person's face (though even smaller, relatively). A superficially literal but actually metaphorical representation might be possible???
Going back to Kupka, The Black Idol derives much of its effect from its obscurity. Could it work is it were even more obscure, barely hinting, horribly, at an aspect of anthropomorphic form?
I don't want to pressure you on this as your point that to depict it literally anthropomorphically would be to lessen it is absolutely correct. Sheer scale and strange proportions are by no means enough - the monster in Cloverfield, for example, did not merely disappoint me, it seriously pissed me off.
A possibility is that the Watcher is a landscape in itself, and perhaps something can come of that. It has a fractal, labyrinthine aspect, so aggregations of parts might be seen to diminish in perspective and then be seen as components of a greater whole. I've attached a Virgil Finlay illustration for Aldiss' Cryptozoic. That isn't really what I was thinking of, but something about, but the idea of a landscape unnaturally taking upon zoomorphic and anthropomorphic tropes was running through my thinking. Now, as mentioned above, this can be at gigantic scale...
Of course Giger provides plenty of precedents too.
Hmmm, OK, that's all appropriately weird, but maybe a "reaction shot" is what will be accessible...
Going back to the "lake", P and M talk there - actually, I imply pretty clearly that they have sex. Perhaps there is some potential in thinking of what comes from two figures on the gleaming, convex surface of an enormous eye? A bit literal, but in this case, scale may do the trick...
Meyr
in a Palaquin is just a Palaquin, so we want her out of it.
If
the Redoubt is in the pic, then it's going to be the whole pic. It's big. That's
either 'Leaving the gates' or just the massive subtly textured walls of the
Redoubt. Neither shows the Land.
The
Redoubt from afar is just a pyramid. More important, it 's presence
trivialises the abyss of the Land.
Images of skulls, sex organs, ghost girls etc
could be a little prosaic.
And obscure. Probably the intimate and human aspects would be worth emphasising - it is an-aeons-long love affair between M&P.
The Redoubt is surely extremely difficult to represent. It is not merely a very big building, but literally bigger than any mountain on Earth (I think) and it may have texture, stratification of some sort that indicates that it has over twelve hundred levels above ground. Close up, it is simply a wall illuminated by a patch of light. A bit of background detail - eg. a painting in someone's apartments depicting the Redoubt, or some technical diagram, again, only incidentally shown, perhaps in a "Filed Marshall stands over the table and points at the map" type illustration?
Maybe, rather than having to depict the Redoubt in any literal or technical way, it becomes a motif or stylised logo or dingbat or vignette at each chapter/section head? It's shown by decoration rather than by illustration. (I'm trying not to think of all those souvenir models of the Eiffel Tower...)
I
think we're left with the Eater 'Ravishing' Meyr whilst the Quint's attempt to
stave it off and Pallin watches, helpless. This, in itself, has some Symbolist
resonance.
Agreed. That may be the only way out of the conundrum.
As
to the third section: To quote HAL, 'I'm still collating'.
It's
almost certainly going to be of the Manshonyagger (We can't ignore them
can we!)and Meyr being Joan D'Ark-y, but I haven't identified the
specific incident as yet. As we all know, there are a fair
few.
Yeah, a manshonyagger would be pretty marvelous to see. Mira's confrontation with the machine in the latter section, after having passed the grisly "scarecrow", the real monster appears and boasts/trys to tempt her... It can be presented multiple ways - this great machine appears and what happens next?! Woman in armour is parlaying with giant mechanical spider - her face is exposed, she seems confident, her gestures indicate dialogue, her face is on a level with a cluster of lenses and other sensory apparatus... Face appears in the metal of its central head... and so on.
And,
maybe a small 'title' 'symbolic image' for the beginning of each of the three
sections would be stylish.
Re the comment on the Redoubt as a decorative motif above, another possibility is Face - he/it lends him/itself to stylised decorative treatment, being, as I mentioned, a Green Man type figure.
If only one full image - the cover - is possible due to constraints of time and money, a dingbat based on Face or the Redoubt may do to introduce each section. If something more is possible, then maybe selected iconic objects, for example, the old watchman's helm that child Meyr picks up, a diskos, a butterfly, a doll or whatever could announce each section.
All
ok?
Best:
Smuzz
